Kazakhstan to protect copyright in AI generated content

Photo: Shutterstock, photo editor: Adelina Mamedova

The number of AI-based startups in Kazakhstan has been growing rapidly, while venture investment in the sector has increased from $14 million to $73 million. This shift makes protecting copyright in AI-generated content increasingly important. MP Yekaterina Smyshlyaeva, who was among the lawmakers involved in drafting Kazakhstan’s Artificial Intelligence Law, shared her views on the matter with Kursiv.media.

Prompts as intellectual property

According to the MP, prompts (queries submitted to neural networks) are protected by copyright law and may be recognized as copyrighted works.

If a dispute arises, it is resolved in court, where the author’s contribution is assessed. There is an international practice in which courts review the history of prompts used to generate the content, Smyshlyaeva explained.

As an example, she described how professional video generation works in practice. For the «magic» to happen, a scriptwriter must write a video prompt in collaboration with a camera operator, who specifies camera angles, lighting direction, and other technical details. Therefore, any detailed prompt for such a video constitutes intellectual labor, and the resulting video is subject to copyright protection.

In the event of a dispute between the authors of two similar images generated by a neural network, they can prove their rights by presenting their prompts. The one that led to the creation of the image from scratch would be considered the original, while a prompt that asks AI to modify an existing image would be treated as a derivative copy.

According to Smyshlyaeva, the new AI regulations adopted in Kazakhstan allow authors to prohibit their works from being used to train generative models. She acknowledged that while such restrictions are technically complex, they are necessary.

The scope of AI in Kazakhstan

According to Kazakhstan’s first AI Country Report, officially presented at the Astana Hub Event Hall, more than 100 AI startups are currently operating in the country. AI tools are being implemented across many sectors and are particularly popular in finance, telecommunications, e-government services, retail, and IT. These tools are commonly used for customer service, marketing, and analytics.

«Artificial intelligence in Kazakhstan is no longer a niche experiment and is becoming part of the country’s economic architecture — from startups and the adoption of AI-based solutions in corporate processes to the implementation of government policy in this area. The synchronized development of startups, businesses, and government is a key indicator of market maturity,» said Assel Abdrakhmanova, managing partner at RISE Research.